Canberra Questions...

  • I noticed that the Canberra is regularly updated and one of the latest updates was to make it compatible with P3Dv4. Has anyone tried it in P3Dv4?

    It had been a while since I used it as I needed to get a new high-end PC to run P3D properly, which I got this year. However, when I tried the aircraft again yesterday and today in P3Dv4 I had a few problems with it. Some of these were minor glitches which I have opened a support ticket for, but I wanted to ask about flight handling on here because I experienced some weirdness with that.

    At high altitude and high speed it seems fine, but when I slow down for an approach and start vectoring around the airport, the aircraft sudden banks behaves erratically, as if it's been blown by powerful gust of wind, making it impossible to maintain a course properly. It seemed to happen sporadically, and then it seemed to be alright again for a while. I am using Active Sky and I wondered if that might be something to do with it, although there was no bad weather at the time - just an 8kt wind at my altitude.

    Another thing that happened might just be due to my ignorance in flying this machine, but during an approach I lowered the flaps to see what would happen and the thing just fell out of the sky. It was like deploying a parachute brake. Fortunately I was quick enough to put on slew mode and prevent it crashing, and eventually after adding a lot of fake altitude managed to get it to stop stalling, but then it just wanted to climb, and it was not possible to trim that away. It could be caused a bad CoG, due to fuel imbalance, or missing navigatorm, but anyway, I have not been able to use the flaps as anything other than an airbrake.

    I am interested to hear from anyone who has this aircraft if they have experienced any of these things. I really like the aircraft and hope it continues to be updated and developed.

  • Hopefully a couple of 'straightforward' answers for you:

    The new flight dynamics have been developed using real world coefficients, so the aircraft will be more responsive in flightsim's 'overdone' weather - you mention you are using Active Sky, the simple adjustment to make here is to drop the wind and turbulence scales down to around 15%. You should no longer have the feel that the aircraft is running on rails but it should be perfectly controllable. Joystick sensitivities set to max with minimal null zones.

    The flaps are an oddity and you need to be prepared for them. They take roughly 15 seconds to extend (from memory) and pretty much as soon as you select them you need to start trimming forwards. You will end up with full forwards trim and at lower speeds may still need a significant push force on the stick (particularly if you haven't paid attention to fuel management). You mention that they are like a braking parachute - that's precisely the effect they were intended to create. Not much use for lift but they gave enough drag to keep the engines in the higher RPM bands where they were more responsive. We had possibly the highest houred Canberra pilot advising through the project (also still current on the PR9 at the time we built it) and he was very descriptive about this part of the flight regime!

    Hope that helps you a bit, nice to see the PR9 is still being enjoyed by others as it's still one I revisit quite often as a break from development!

  • @Delta558
    Thanks so much for your reply and advice. It's good to know about the Active Sky settings. Whilst awaiting a reply I had been reading up on how the wake turbulence effects are overdone in Active Sky, but was not aware of the just wind itself being a problem. I'll try lowering wind too, although I think it might be an idea to try some test landings in cross-winds to help me determine the best factor to use for wind.

    As for the flaps it's re-assuring to know that's how they are on the real aircraft - thanks! I'm not sure when I'd want to use them as they cause such a drastic change in the behaviour of the aircraft I find it barely manageable.

    When I've mastered this one, I think I'll make a nice video of it for YouTube, using ORBX scenery in p3dv4, where everything has terrific performance.